Catch up

After almost three weeks with only sheep, goats, deer, and rabbits for company, I am sitting in front of my desk-top marvelling at how good internet access is in a small backwater in South West Turkey.  My mobile phone is by my side and apart from a glitch that has deleted my whole contacts list, it has a full signal. A couple of days after I arrived in Scotland, my blog disappeared and all attempts to access it were met with a message telling me that BacktoBodrum had been deleted and the name was available  for reassignment.  I'd been a bit suspicious the day before I left Turkey;  I usually average 200 to 300 views a day, so a couple of days of 1000 plus views from the Ukraine were very out of character.  My only internet access in The Highlands is via a satellite dish which is as speedy as the dial up modems we were so excited about late last century.  The only way I knew to recover my blog was to ask for a text to be sent to the number I'd specified when I set it up.  A mobile number! The nearest mobile signal was an hour's drive away. The mobile was Turkish and I'd never used it in the UK, so even if I set off in the Land Rover to find a signal, there was no guarantee it would work.  I went to bed that night pretty sure that my blogging days were over and cursing myself for not copying the last year's worth of posts. 

When I next got a chance to check my emails, I found that my gmail account had also been suspended so I had to resort to putting a plea for help on Facebook. I tried to post a couple of times but despite the post appearing on my timeline, it disappeared a few minutes later.  I had been well and truly hacked.  Luckily FaceTime was still working on my iPad and I got my husband to post my plea for help on his page.  To cut a long story short, with lots of help from friends, I managed to prove who I was by luckily remembering the answer to those seemingly pointless questions I answered two and a half years ago (first best friend and first pet's name and most common 4 email addresses).  After a fretful 24 hours, my blog and email account reappeared and I changed all my passwords, something we should all do on a regular basis. 

On a lighter note,  at the end of my trip, I spent  an hour trying to develop a taste for whisky in the Tomatin distillery.  I tried my best but could manage only the tiniest sip of the three single malts on offer. The smell of scotch has always made me feel sick.  I felt extremely guilty leaving this expensive brew in the glass. The tour was fascinating but my tastebuds failed to appreciate the finished product. I think I'll stick to the grape and give barley a miss.